Revelations and Disappointments [Fable]

Disappointed? To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I think disillusioned, dissatisfied, and distraught would be pretty adjectives. But disappointed? That’s not even close to how I feel. I was expecting a game that was no less than 40 hours long. To hear 10-20 is one heck of a shock.

Now, I’m not going to argue with the reviews. Ten hours? Fifteen hours? Six hours? It’s all irrelevant. Two scores over 90% and one score of 8/10 leaves little room to start questioning Fable’s quality. Even if you so wish to call Fable dirt on a disc, the gaming world is already set to laugh at you. But I don’t have a problem with Fable being short but sweet. Reality isn’t the problem as I still plan on buying the game regardless. My disappointment stems from fiction. From what I was hoping Fable would be. And I was hoping it would be EPIC!

Not just epic for a X-Box game, or “this generation” epic, but epic for RPG’s in general. After 102 years in development, I wanted a game that would set the standard for console RPG’s for years to come. I wanted to see an RPG upon which other RPG’s would be compared to and ultimately crushed by. Not based off the mere fact that it’s a good game. Based off the reviews it’s obvious Fable is a good game. But I was hoping it…. no, I wanted it to be more than just a good game. I wanted a classic.

And let me be a little bit clearer before I go on. I wanted Fable to be an instant classic because of how revolutionary it would be. The only problem being… Fable is revolutionary. How many other RPG’s can you get married? Own land? Grow from child to adult? Have your physical appearance affect how NPC’s react to you? Have scars that stay with you forever? NPC’s that will keep a grudge against you? Fable has many revolutionary features, indeed it does.

However, being that Fable can be beaten in 10-20 hours, my fear – my biggest fear – is how fleshed out these revolutionary features are.

You see, all the revolutionary aspects of Fable I want to love are the same aspects I fear I may not get enough of. Aging characters was a feature I was expecting to enjoy the most. But at 10-20 hours, how much of this feature can I really enjoy? Several hours into the game I will already be a teen, and several hours later an adult. My childhood will move by so fast that, much like Michael Jackson, I will never get to enjoy it. I could care little about being a child for a couple days and then growing a goatee and testies overnight. The fact that I got to play as a child isn’t going to make me love my character any more if it’s over in a split second. And I can’t even imagine how such rushed aging will affect the storyline.

Speaking as an aspiring writer, I know damn well I could have packed 20 hours worth of storyline into just your childhood. And easily spent another 20 hours from your teenage years to full adulthood. Could you even imagine how deep of a storyline that would be? The idea alone blows my mind. What you could do with character development, plot twists, NPC interaction, land development, etc…

Imagine you’ve played the game for nearly 18 hours. You’re a young adult now and you’re village gets conquered. For the next five game years of your life you fight to free your village and restore their freedom.

Just the thought alone is making me salivate.

And it could just build from there. You just don’t free your village, but the entire country. A plot twist. The storyline gets deeper. You’re fighting not just for freedom for man, but freedom for all of mankind. You travel from land to land uniting bands of freedom fighters. Growing stronger. Building an army around you. You collect an ancient weapon meant to lay to rest forever and always the evil that plague your land. You fight hard. There you are at the final confrontation. Just you and him. Plot twist. You realize he only grew to power and decimated your lands because of one small mistake you made when you were a child nearly 40 freakin’ hours ago. And how do you defeat? With just a small handful of spells you learned as a child, and mastered 40 hours later, as a full grown adult.

THAT is the type of epic storyline/gameplay I was hoping for.

Now, I don’t know if what I described is even close to the actual storyline of Fable. I’m just merely giving an example of how far BBB could have pushed the limit of creativity. But at 10-20 hours, my gut feeling is telling me this game won’t be as epic as when I first heard about it years ago.

Now, I understand the gameplay can be artificially lengthened through numerous side quests and other ventures. But some of them I just don’t care about… I mean, I really don’t care for. For example, getting married.

It’s cool that you can get married, and I don’t look down or anyone who wishes to spend 20 hours gathering brides from all over the world. Much like how I don’t look down on anyone who plays The Sims. But if the main game is only 10-20 hours, how much time can I waste getting married over and over again? Should I even bother? How is marriage going to affect the gameplay if it affects the gameplay at all? Will my character grow stronger after a night of hot sex? An odd question, yes. But I want marriage to do more than giving me something to do. And what of owning land? How much land can I buy before I’m utterly bored of gathering land?

I think it’s a brilliant idea to allow gamers to continue playing after they’ve completed the main quest. Truly an idea I hope passes on to many other console RPG’s. But without an active storyline to drive me forward, and constantly engage my mind, I don’t see why I would want to. Yeah, if I want storyline I could go read one of the many history books (Read: scrolling text) BBB has implemented into the game. But that’s not storyline to me.

That’s not character development. That’s not a deep and complex plot. Often times it’s not even integral to the main story. All backstory is… is backstory. Backstories aren’t exactly hard to do. Sudeki had a decent backstory, but the main story still sucked. So I’m not impressed with backstory. At least not they way it’s usually used. Now if it was more like Panzer Dragoon Saga (or Orta) where the backstory becomes both a part of the mystique AND part of the main story, you have me hooked. But usually backstory just gives some snippets of the past that doesn’t affect the ongoing storyline much. And it’s already been stated several times that Fable’s storyline is pretty weak. So that’s why I’m not looking forward to reading generic history texts in Fable.

Overall, I’m not trying to bash Fable. As I just read, the game is coming out in less than a month and I’m definitely going to get a pre-order soon. Because (as I can plainly see) Fable is still getting some amazing reviews even at 10-20 hours long. I made this post merely to describe my utter disappointment at what Fable was hyped to be and what Fable actually is.

Not only that, but I wanted to bring attention to just what Fable could have been. How the more revolutionary features of Fable could have been implemented differently and made the game 10x bigger than what it is. Right now, Fable looks to be an amazing game. But I can’t shake the feeling that Fable will only be remembered as the game that could have been.

The One, The only One
- The Lotus One

go here http://fl.krahs-emag.com/post.php?threadid=57&post=544

*Slaps Boricua_man upside the head* Go away! We don' t want to visit your message board.

Anyway lotusson, I' m not sure how accurate a time of 10-20 hours actually is. Most Reviewers I' m sure would have already spent ages wondering round the world of Fable in the time they' ve had writing previews. I' d like to bet that the 10-20 hours is just running through the world not really getting the full experience of Fable. I agree with you on the fact that 110-20 hours of core gameplay does seem a little low and takes away from the ' epic' feeling of the game but hopefully if there is enough to do you could spend forever in the world just having fun...

...think of GTA. I can plough through all the missions in GTA3 in about 10-20 hours, easily. Yet most of the fun of GTA and most of what GTA is remembered for is it' s open ended gameplay. There is a story you can go to or in between each mission you can piss about and go where ever. That’s the same kind of fun factor I hope Fable has.

That’s probably not addressed many of your points but I had a need to say what I just did. Have hope my friend! It could still amaze you yet.

Anyway lotusson, I' m not sure how accurate a time of 10-20 hours actually is. Most Reviewers I' m sure would have already spent ages wondering round the world of Fable in the time they' ve had writing previews. I' d like to bet that the 10-20 hours is just running through the world not really getting the full experience of Fable.

Unfortunately, that 10-20 hours includes the 40 or so side quests present in the game. Here' s a quote from the Teamxbox review.

**Longevity 8.4 (lowest review posted for the game)
The promises of 40-50 hours of gameplay are not to be. Even gamers who take their time and complete every single quest and uncover most secrets can realistically expect a 20-25 hour game. Being that no additional quests are given after completing the story quests, this hurts the replayability. Everyone should play through the game at least twice; the experience is that good.**

Yeah, it' s not looking too great for the length... but I' m still looking foward to wasting time living my life in a town and doing all kinds of good/evil things to people. It' s the time inbetween the missions and side quests I think will bump up the play time.

I liked that post lotusson, and I' ve got some good news and bad news for you-

First of all, some of those revolutionary aspects you are talking about have either been " thinned out" or completely discarded. When they say " thinned out," you can imagine what that means with a 20-25 hour RPG. Certain parts do remain intact, but they appear more as gimmicks than actual gameplay elements. Like any other RPG, the gameplay centers on battle, story, and exploration. Now, that' s not necessarily a bad thing, because even as gimmicks, they are STILL revolutionary. It offers a foundation that can be built on in the future, as you well know.

I think Fable can be well-equated to DOOM 3. DOOM 3 was reputed to be this instant classic, and the " best game ever made," just like Fable. The hype for the two games was not only similar, but damn near identical. DOOM 3 comes out, nets 8' s and 9' s, and nobody says that it' s the " best game ever made." Why? Because there wasn' t anything revolutionary about it besides the graphics. It was an FPS just like any other FPS we' ve seen in the past five years. But that amazing graphics engine will be the foundation for future masterpieces, which is the true accomplishment of that game...not the game itself.

As you hinted at, what Fable attempted and may have fallen short of is the important part. It' s something that has finally been done in video games, and while the aspects aren' t fleshed out enough, they are THERE, and developers will have to recognize that in the future. Given enough time, and perhaps we' ll see a sequel to Fable that builds on what it started. That would be my #1 hope, as a true lover of RPG' s.

I will buy the game as well, because as you said, the game' s quality is undeniable. I knew long ago that much of the hype of Fable (and I believe I made a post about it here) was just talk, and we simply weren' t advanced enough in the gaming industry to make all those dreams come true. Fable is turning out to be exactly as I imagined: a very high-quality RPG that implements some never-before-seen things that aren' t quite as big of a deal as initially proposed, and while it doesn' t necessarily revolutionize the genre, it presents the POSSIBILITY of a future revolution.

Kikizo Staff Writer

lotusson,

You call yourself an aspiring writer...I think you' ve already made it! Excellent post!!!

Even though I have a copy pre-ordered, I will probably let this one go by, and see how things turn out after many have played the game and posted their reviews.

I will stick with picking up a copy of Morrowind: GOTY for now...THAT game has 100' s of hours of gameplay/replay value!!!

Thanks for the heads up, lotusson!!!

Videogaming is the contemporary interactive pasttime.

I will stick with picking up a copy of Morrowind: GOTY for now...THAT game has 100' s of hours of gameplay/replay value!!!

Heh, yet I' ve never had the desire to play it. I haven' t a clue why but I' ve a feeling it' ll bore me to tears.

Morrowind: GOTY can be a little boring, but only if you are just wondering aimlessly.

If you actually have intentions of becoming a mage or soldier, thief, etc., then you can really make things interesting...

I had the first Morrowind made for XBOX, but traded it in due not to lack of funds, but time to play through this masterpiece.

The additions for the GOTY version just make this version that much better...

Videogaming is the contemporary interactive pasttime.